The information supplied with the Ultra is clear about how to retrieve backed up material however what I want is to return the Ultra to factory settings and when I use file explorer to look at the disk contents I am not sure what is safe to delete as I want to retain the Smartware software it was supplied with
I can’t see how to make a disk image (using Smartware) which can then be used to recover my desktop pc in the case of complete failure of pc hard drive. If I can’t do so i am assuming that I would be able to use the inbuilt backup on Windows 10 just using the Ultra as a target for the backup and this would solve the above problem. Slightly discouraged by other users reporting that Windows 10 not (yet) compatible.
I apologise if this is the wrong forum for my queries … please advise appropriate place if so.
The backups can be found within the WDSmartware.stor folder, which should be in the root directory of the drive.
Under that you should find a sub-folder for each machine that you’ve backed up, and in those further sub-folders for each of the drives on that particular machine. The backed up files are within those drive folders, in the same logical tree structure as on the original drive.
If you want to delete all of your backups, just delete the whole WDSmartware.stor folder and its content. If you want to delete backups for a given machine, delete the sub-folder for that machine etc etc.
Smartware cannot do disk images. You’ll need different software to do that. A couple of possible options are here if the drive to be cloned is also a WD, or else you can Google the topic and take your pick of various options.
Not sure what Win10 backup can do as I haven’t succumbed to its invitations yet (still on Win7 and will be for a while yet), but MS backup can be used for more full backing up, if not a true disk image.
